RED DAWN, LIFE OF PI

RED DAWN (2012)

Grade: B

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, Josh Hutcherson, Adrianne Palicki, Isabel Lucas, Connor Cruise, Brett Cullen, Will Yun Lee and Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Premise: After the North Korean military conquers their hometown, a group of American teens and young adults gather weapons and rebel against the invaders.

Rated PG-13 for intense action violence and language

Dan Bradley’s Red Dawn is one of those movies that delivers exactly what is expected, and is the better for it. Just over an hour and a half in length, it introduces us to its characters, sets in motion the crucial conflict, gives us some enjoyable camaraderie and fierce action, and ends on a note of sentimental but inspiring patriotism. Largely uncluttered by forced character development or unnecessary romantic interludes, it’s a genuinely decent remake (of the 1984 Patrick Swayze/Charlie Sheen film of the same name) and an engaging time at the movies.

            Spokane, Washington is one of those small towns where everyone knows everyone. One ordinary weekend, a world-weary Marine war veteran (Thor’s Chris Hemsworth) comes unexpectedly home to visit his widowed father (Brett Cullen), the county sheriff, and younger brother (Josh Peck), the starting quarterback for the local high school football team. After a Friday night game in which the young QB nearly leads his team to an inspiring comeback win, the boys retire to a local tavern where the younger brother hangs out with his cutie-pie cheerleader girlfriend (Isabel Lucas) and a few school chums (Josh Hutcherson, Connor Cruise) and the older brother runs into an old acquaintance (Adrianne Palicki) who has a thing for him. Before anything can happen, though, the power unexpectedly goes out, forcing them all to return home.

            The next morning, both brothers awaken to explosions and a sky full of planes dropping armed paratroopers into their backyard and neighborhood. The intruders are North Koreans, and the brothers see them rounding up friends and neighbors while they frantically flee to the city’s wooded outskirts. They’re soon joined by some of their friends from the tavern, but not before they realize the younger brother’s girlfriend has been interned in a prison camp, and their father has been executed by a cruel Korean officer (Will Yun Lee). Distraught, the group vows to do something to avenge their father and their neighbors. With the Marine as their de-facto leader, they begin gathering weapons, food, and explosives, train, and become a new version of the “Viet Cong, the Mujahadeen, the minutemen”, your typical nagging pain in the butt to wealthy invading forces. Nicknamed “The Wolverines”, the group’s excursions soon both inspires the locals-and other rebel groups-to fight back, and earns the increasing ire of the Koreans, who vow to find and kill these guerillas.
            Like I said, Red Dawn isn’t complicated. You could have learned nearly everything I just described by watching the movie’s trailer, and, to please an expectant audience, the screenplay quickly gets down to business. You’re barely ten minutes in before the bombs start falling, and that’s only after a credits sequence set to real-life newsreel footage of President Obama, VP Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton describing the “danger” posed by the increasingly-mobilized North Korean nation. And as soon as the Marine gives his brief rallying speech and all the kids join the rebellion, you’re a two-second training-scene-blip away from the actual shooting and blowing up of bad guys. And hard-core action fans should be mollified to learn that the shoot-outs and chases are pretty legitimate—this isn’t a cutesy kiddie action movie like Spy Kids; the Wolverines bear assault rifles, machine guns, grenades and mines, and use them. And the action rarely stops—there is only the briefest of perfunctory character development scenes, and any serious romantic subplots are sidestepped. No, this is a shoot-em-up, kids and all.

            Given that shoot-first, develop-characters-later mentality, it’s hardly a surprise that Red Dawn is not an actor’s movie, but all the principles acquit themselves admirably. As he proved playing Thor and The Huntsman in blockbusters the last few years, Chris Hemsworth is a solid actor with considerable appeal—rather like a Jason Statham or a Dwayne Johnson, audiences will watch him do pretty much anything. Here, he’s the only actor with sufficient time to develop a character, and he makes it worth our while. Josh Peck, who came up a broad comic actor, struggles a little with more emotional moments, but is nonetheless a satisfactory second fiddle, and Josh Hutcherson, Adrianne Palicki and Connor Cruise all provide effective portrayals in supporting roles.

            Red Dawn is not perfect, of course. Shaky-cam is used to its usual disorienting effect here (rendering one fistfight almost completely unintelligible), many plot developments strain credulity, and one “important” character (the girlfriend played by Isabel Lucas) is left out to dry—more plot device than person. However, the movie’s last third is its best, containing its most gripping action sequence and its best-handled emotional scene. And it ends on just the right note.

            Bottom Line (I Promise): Red Dawn is an effective and engaging hard-core action flick with some solid actors and an intriguing premise. It feels shorter than it is, and it’s never boring. If you’re tired of serious dramas this time of year, this tense action flick might be worth your time.

 Red Dawn was directed by Dan Bradley and written for the screen by Carl Ellsworth and Jeremy Passmore, who based their work on the 1984 screenplay by Kevin Reynolds and John Milius; It is rated PG-13 and runs 114 minutes

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LIFE OF PI (2012)

Grade: B+

Directed by Ang Lee

Starring: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan and Rafe Spall

Rated PG (contains intense emotional content and some animal-related violence)

Slumdog Millionaire meets Cast Away in this visually-stunning adaptation of Yann Martel’s classic novel, which has a singular premise you can’t really beat: a young man survives a devastating shipwreck only to be stranded in the middle of the ocean on a small life boat with the wreck’s only other survivor, an adult tiger. While fear, wrath and hunger all have their place, the two eventually establish a respectful, symbiotic relationship where the boy keeps the tiger alive because having something to occupy his mind and emotion keeps him alive during hundreds of days alone at sea. Call it the ultimate coming-of-age story. Directed by Oscar-winner Ang Lee (whose impressive credits include Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), this film has been hailed as a shoo-in for multiple Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture. It’s also been called “the next Avatar” and “a visual miracle”, and for good reason.

            Starting with a gorgeous credits sequence packed with sumptuous visuals of animals walking, crawling and wallowing in their zoo habitats, Life of Pi introduces us to the adult Pi (Irrfan Khan), a middle-aged man who has achieved respectable success after immigrating to the United States from poor India. When we meet him, he’s hosting a friend of a friend, a young author (Rafe Spall) who’s been told Pi has an amazing life story. In flashback, we learn of Pi’s youth. The younger of two boys born to a zoo owner (Adil Hussain), Pi was initially christened with a classic Indian name that is pronounced “pissing”. Thankfully, he found a way to boldly ensure everyone learned to call him Pi—yes, after the mathematical sign that means 3.14—and could soon occupy his mind with more important things than playground taunts, such as his first crush and his experience with different religions (to the chagrin of his reason-first father, he soon becomes a Christian Muslim Buddhist Hindu). And it may just be God who saves him when, as a teen (and played by Suraj Sharma), he’s the only survivor of the shipwreck that claims his family after they leave India for America with all of their animals in tow.

            At first accompanied by several animals, Pi is soon left sharing a lifeboat with the beautiful but ferocious Bengal tiger, who, through an amusing mistake in paperwork during his delivery to the zoo, is named Richard Parker. Though Pi manages to construct a buoy of sorts out of the boat’s life jackets, paddles and netting, he knows the only way to survive the rough seas is to get in the boat itself, even though roughly half of it is occupied by Richard Parker. Though Pi gets a lucky break one day when the tiger foolishly leaps overboard in pursuit of some tuna and can’t clamber back into the boat, Pi can’t find it in his heart to kill the animal or leave it stranded. He soon devises ways to distinguish “his half” of the boat from “its half”, to feed it, and to even get shade and collect fresh water for them both. The tiger never gets past the growling and snarling stage, but Pi comes to realize he would have long expired of loneliness and despair if he weren’t forced to stay awake and alert because of the predator’s presence.

            Life of Pi is, truly, an amazing visual spectacle, from the incredibly convincing tiger and rough, rocking seas to flocks of flying fish, gorgeous sunsets and powerfully intimidating storm fronts approaching from the horizon. This is a movie that inspires awe, and it deserves terms like “lovely” and “beautiful”. In fact, Pi is so visually impressive (probably a given for several different technical categories at the Oscars) that you’re soon convinced that even the scenes of the two grown men talking or strolling through a park are filmed in a way you’ve never seen.

            As Pi, Suraj Sharma gives one of the year’s most raw and wonderful performances, and Irrfhan Khan is steady and moving as his older self. This film is rich with emotion, from Pi’s weeping over his dead family to his frustration with the immovable predator to his desperation in literally fighting it for food when a large fish flops aboard the lifeboat. Many people will probably cry, and few won’t be touched. Regrettably, the power and wonder of the story’s signature passage renders the end a little dull (you kinda wish the magic would never end), but it’s still powerful and inescapably moving.

Bottom Line (I Promise): I haven’t read the book, but it’s definitely on my list after I was touched, thrilled, and moved by the movie adaptation. Life of Pi is gorgeous (in 2-D as well as 3-D), intense, and memorable.

Life of Pi was directed by Ang Lee; the screenplay was written by David Magee, adapted from Yann Martel’s novel; it’s rated PG and 127 minutes long